Asian Capitalism(s): Origins, Transformations, and Perspectives

This session invites analyses of the processes that led to the “rise of Asia” out of (semi-)colonial dependency, the trajectories and institutional forms that enabled an increasing number of Asian cities, regions and countries to become centers of globalized Capitalism.

Origins and Transformations of Asian Capitalism(s)
“State-directed capitalism”, “administrative guidance of the economy”, “developmental state”, “Capitalism from below” – certainly, state regulation has been crucial for the capitalist take off in all Asian countries, but the relevant instruments and mechanisms have not been systematically compared yet. The ability to transform the state`s role during the growth and development process seems to be essential. Without a powerful private economy – family-owned conglomerates, business networks or ethnic trading groups – and the search for market opportunities, the “Asian economic miracle” would not have been possible. However, in spite of all market-inspired reforms, Asian Capitalism(s) did not turn into systems modelled on economic liberalism.

Variety of Asian Capitalism
The rise of Asia challenges the comparative “Varieties of Capitalism” research, traditionally focussed on OECD-countries. Taking up arguments and analyses given in the Socio-Economic Review (SER) Special Issue - April 2013 “Bringing Asia into the Comparative Capitalism Perspective” would give insights into the puzzling variety of Asian Capitalism: just different stages of one or two basic “models” – or as many cases as countries? Do we observe convergence or divergence processes? Variety of Asian Capitalism – Variety of Modernities? How to deal analytically with the regional character of the “rise of Asia”?

Perspectives
Will Asian Capitalism(s) deepen the predominantly neo-liberal course of globalization or provide a corrective influence? With the increasing economic and political weight of Asia, do we witness the emergence of new, more equitable and inclusive post-US world order – or rather, as Slavoj Zizek suggests, “a world where the only alternative is either Anglo-Saxon neoliberalism or Chinese-Singaporean capitalism with Asian values”?

Capital and the Environmental Crisis

The session will feature investigations of capitalist responses to the global environmental crisis – their social, economic and political underpinnings and implications. Issues that might be addressed include the financialization of nature in carbon-trading schemes; the notions of eco-efficiency forwarded by groups like the World Business Council for Sustainable Development; environmental Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Program Related Investments (PRI); and the possible fractional conflicts within capital over ecological issues. The session welcomes papers that explore the socio-ecological implications of the financial crisis of 2008. Across the entire range of issues, an important question to be addressed is, where is the class support for these initiatives likely to come from?

Feminist scholarship has made important strides, improving our understanding of the forces behind gender inequality by either advancing gender-sensitive perspectives on policy-making processes and comparative welfare state developments or offering rich case studies and theoretical contributions to analysis of work transformations. Alternative feminist approaches point to different aspects of policies and institutional arrangements that are consequential for explaining complex inequalities across countries. The session invites papers discussing current debates and new frameworks for analyzing varieties of both class and gender regimes.

We welcome papers addressing critical questions about the dynamics of complex inequalities:

What do we gain or lose from different methodological and interpretive strategies and from conducting research at different levels of analysis (micro, meso and macro)?

What temporal concepts (such as tipping points) or complexity theory are appropriate?

How do varieties of gender regimes affect different trajectories of capitalism?

Does the social organization of care (structures of social reproduction) matter in explaining differences?

What role and impact do gender politics and women’s mobilization have on trajectories of change?

Corporate Networks: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives

The social networks that knit together large corporations and that link corporations to other organizations and institutions have long been a fruitful object of sociological inquiry. This session casts a wide net, inviting papers on corporate-corporate networks, as well as corporate-noncorporate and corporate-state networks. Submissions that address changes in these networks across time, comparisons between countries, and/or transnational ties are particularly welcome.

Environment and Development: Empirical Considerations

Relationships between the environment and forms of development are foundational topics for sociologists who work at the intersections of environmental sociology, political economy, economic sociology, and political sociology. This session invites papers that provide new theoretically-engaged empirical insights on environment and development relationships at any level of analysis, and of any methodological orientation.

Ethnography and the Economy

In the last few years, there has been a renewed interest in the close-up examination of economic life. Ethnographic methods have been crucial for recent research that sheds light on the workings of trade-floors and the financial world in general, the intersections between economy and culture, the conflictive relations between market and non-market exchanges, the relations between commodities and gifts, the uses of money and credit, the dynamics of informal economies, the world of economic policy-making and expertise, the complexity of currencies, the configuration of markets and economic subjects, and the nature of calculation in the economy, among other topics. This session invites innovative work based on substantial participant observation of economic life, broadly considered.

Gender, Class and the Financial Crisis: Is Neoliberalism Gendered?

The 2008 financial crisis has continuing effects with the intensification of neoliberal attempts to restructure economy and society, especially where government budget deficits have developed. But there is a split between macro-level analysis of finance capital and feminist analysis of the experience of recession. Feminist and historical materialist theories need to re-engage after a period of separate development.

This session seeks papers on gender, class and the financial crisis that address theoretical and empirical questions such as:

Would it have made any difference if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters?

How should feminist theory and historical materialism re-engage in the context of the crisis?

Is the absence of women in financial decision-making an issue of culture, of democratic deficit, or more systemic?

Is the crisis just a normal part of capitalism or a critical turning point in neo-liberalism?

How can feminist theories of intersectionality be applied to macro-level questions concerning economic restructuring?

Should the feminist gaze return to the economy from the analytical turn to culture?

What are the implications of the political configurations emerging in the crisis for theories of gender and class?

Is neoliberalism gendered?

Global Perspectives of Financialization

Session OrganizerAaron PITLUCK, Central European University and Illinois State University, Hungary/USA,
Aaron.Pitluck@IllinoisState.edu

Session in English

There is nothing like a good crisis to concentrate one’s attention, and sociologists are no different in this regard. Since the last World Congress, there has been a flourishing of empirical research in the subfield of sociology of finance, most of it focused on the causes and consequences of the seizure of international financial markets in 2006-7, and the ongoing political economic oscillations in the Euro-zone. Reflecting these twin and interrelated crises (and a northern-bias in our discipline), most of this empirical research has been conducted in the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. This is understandable, but short sighted. Such scholarship tends to neglect ties between north and south within financial markets and organizations, as well as neglect unique processes found in the south. Moreover, research on financialization in the north tends to make unverified covering law statements regarding financialization in the south. This panel seeks to initiate a correction to this state of affairs.

This call for papers solicits empirical research engaged with sociological theory that takes place in financial markets, organizations, or institutions outside of the United States and European Union. Research conducted in the global north is also welcome, as long as the paper’s focus is on interlinkages with the global south. Proposals should theorize from empirical work, and therefore should indicate the paper’s methodology, data, and argument.

Historical Formation of Social and Economic Inequalities

This session seeks papers that are related to all the issues of stratification and inequality. The session is interested in wide range of topics that are relevant to stratification including income, class, migration, environment, education, family, gender, race, ethnicity, health, mobility, labor market, social networks, and others.

The session is open to various theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Papers relevant to the themes such as historical, comparative, and/or world-systems analyses on globalization, health, financial crisis, the impact of changing demographic landscape, natural/environmental disasters, and the like will be particularly welcome, but will not be limited to these themes and approaches. The papers addressing theoretical framework, conceptual and methodological issues on the study of stratification and inequality over long-run history are also welcome.

Structures of power, prestige, wealth and income at global level have been changed, and national stratification structures and processes have increasingly influenced by the growing integration of societies. Economic stress has imposed increasing challenges to vulnerable groups across societies. Those classic, ongoing and novel reconfigurations of inequality/stratification at different levels, time and space are the central issues of the session.

Network Theory in East Asian Society

Papers in this session draw on theories of networks relevant to East Asian society. We welcome empirical research highlighting the utility of the concept, the need for adaptation, or the fundamental revision of network theories. Extension of the concept to other topics of particular relevance in East Asia such as studies of social capital, of state-society relations, or of network dynamics in organization theory would likewise be relevant. An emerging dialogue on regional integration has spurred studies of cross-border networks, whether among consumers in the expanding Asian urban middle class, or of production networks moving products and technology across the region. Our goal is both a stronger empirical base and clearer theoretical direction. But the enterprise of refinement and refocusing of concepts for the East Asian context depends in part on a dialogue between East and West. Both in papers and discussions we hope to stimulate an exchange on network theory and application that facilitates new streams of research and interaction between theorists and those in empirical research.

Perspectives on the Political Economy of Development

Scholars who are from or working in low-income countries, indigenous nations, and poor areas within rich countries often have perspectives on economy and society that differ dramatically from those of scholars based at well-resourced universities in rich countries. Scholars from both sides of the South-North divide can learn much from each other. Political economy is an area in which it is particularly important that views from both sides be heard. Though this session is organized by a scholar based at a well-resourced university in a rich country, it is organized with the intent of providing a global platform for the presentation and publication of perspectives originating in all parts of the world.

In addition to presentation at the World Congress, papers submitted for this session will also be considered for publication in an online peer-reviewed proceedings volume to be edited by the organizer. Prospective presenters who wish to see their papers published in this volume should submit a working paper of not more than 6,000 words, plus an abstract of not more than 200 words. Submissions of abstracts without papers are also welcome, but these will be considered for presentation only. Submissions are welcome on any topic relating to economy and society, and may include research papers, theoretical essays, review articles, or other kinds of academic work. Submissions from all scholars (including those based at well-resourced universities in rich countries) are welcome and will be considered on an equal basis.

Precarious Work and Employment Risks in East Asia

Integrative Session: RC02 Economy and Society, RC44 Labor Movements and RC30 Sociology of Work.Not open for submission of abstracts.

Session in English

RC02 Business Meeting

Resistance and Revolution in Global Historical Perspective

Sociological thinking about resistance to capitalist world ordering has for the most part remained focused on the present conjuncture, only venturing beyond the neo-liberal world order by borrowing categories from cosmopolitan ideologies, or by thinking in very abstract terms. Thus stuck in false abstractions, it has remained very much a prisoner of the idea of continuity, incapable of looking beyond hegemonies (that of transnational capital in the present moment, and before: Pax Americana, Pax Britannica...), at prospects for revolutionary change.

This session gathers scholars from different analytical traditions (world-systems analysis, Gramscian IPE, material geography, anthropology, transnational sociology, radical public sociology), who have in common their ambition to stretch the historical imagination of contemporary thinking about world order and revolution/resistance. Thinking globally, with reference to the broad tradition of historical sociology, organizers hope to triangulate findings, and thus contribute a more substantial understanding of world orders and resistances.

Solidarity Economy Alternatives: Vision, Practice, and Theory

Session OrganizersVishwas SATGAR, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Vishwas.Satgar@wits.ac.za Michelle WILLIAMS, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, Michelle.Williams@wits.ac.za

Session in English

This panel invites papers that look broadly at the solidarity economy. The solidarity economy is an important transformative initiative rooted in myriad experiments around the world that are democratic, values-based, and movement-driven. Various institutional forms such as worker run factories, communal enterprises, community financing mechanisms and cooperatives are all being networked into grassroots solidarity economy processes. Moreover, the solidarity economy has engendered various theoretical approaches, methodologies, movement building strategies, and international solidarities. The World Social Forum has also become an important space to diffuse and share solidarity economy ideas and practices. In the context of the global crisis, the solidarity economy has emerged in various parts of the world with immense potential to disrupt capitalist-centered political economies. Is the emergent political economy of the solidarity economy transforming civil society-state-economy boundaries? Is it redistributing power to grassroots social forces? Is the solidarity economy engendering a new logic to reproduce life, meet human needs and end ecological destruction? We welcome submissions on solidarity economy initiatives from all over world and on all aspects of the solidarity economy.

South-South Relationships and Global (In)equality

Assessments of global inequality have historically focused on systems of unequal exchange and structural imbalances of power between the North and the South. However, South-South flows of trade, immigration, investment and aid are on the rise as emerging economies expand economic activity beyond their borders and seek labor, natural resources and markets in the less developed countries of the South. The increasing significance of these relationships on a global scale raises questions about the implications for global inequality and calls for an increase in analytical attention to South-South interactions. Do these relationships present opportunities for greater equality in exchange, employment and wealth accumulation relative to North-South relationships? Or are South-South relationships setting the stage for greater divergence within the Global South and new systems of unequal exchange and power imbalances similar to those between the North and the South? This session invites papers that examine these and related questions using quantitative or qualitative methods of analysis. Comparative analysis is especially encouraged.

The Global Migration of Gendered Care Work. Part II

Integrative Session: RC02 Economy and Society, RC32 Women in Society and RC44 Labour Movements Not open for submission of abstracts.

The Sociology of Consumers and Consumption. Part I

Consumption plays an increasingly important role in social life and social thought. The sociological study of consumers and consumption has therefore become a growing, albeit still under-researched, strand within sociology. Conversely, sociological theories, concepts, methodologies and approaches are widely embraced in consumer research in the area of marketing. This session aims to bring together sociologists interested in consumption-related phenomena and consumer researchers interested in the sociological aspects of consumption behavior to discuss the latest trends, issues, methodological approaches in the study of the sociology of consumers and consumption. Topics covered by the session include, but are not limited to: Consumer Culture Theory, consumer socialization, a life course perspective of consumption, social media and consumption.

Think Tanks as Key Spaces of the Global Structure of Power

The purpose of this session is to explore the dynamics of think-tanks networks, the coalitions created to advance the social purpose they implicitly or explicitly endorse and, in particular, the spaces they occupy in the structures and fields of power at the national, regional and global level. Think tanks – broadly defined as organizations specialized in public policy analysis – have become instrumental in re-articulating private, state, media and academic elites to shape public policies affecting populations in most of the world. They have weaved networks at the national, regional and global levels, within which public and private interests are redefined; discussions are organized to delineate public agendas and reach ideological consensus; and compact teams of technocrats are brought together with public officers to push such agendas forward.

They often concentrate enormous expertise and organizational resources and function as nurseries for ideas, knowledge and technocrats. However, they are far from being homogeneous as they espouse different ideologies and social purposes, deal with different issues and engender contradictions and divisions within the networks. They can contribute decisively to intensify risks and inequalities with the reforms and policies they recommend and defend; or instead, they can struggle to construct alternative strategies to the most acute problems facing societies, including the distribution of human, social, economic, security and environmental rights. They can push forward a market-led agenda, or an agenda to contain and resist market forces from liberal or even anti-systemic perspectives. But in this regard their actions are frequently jumbled and timid.

Joint Sessions

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